Quotes by Lester Bangs

About Lester Bangs:

Leslie Conway "Lester" Bangs was an American music journalist, critic, author, and musician. Often cited during his lifetime as "America's Greatest Rock Critic", he wrote for Creem and Rolling Stone magazines and was known for his leading influence in rock music criticism.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity.

Lester Bangs

The first mistake of art is to assume that it's serious.

Lester Bangs

if the main reason we listen to music in the first place is to hear passion expressed- as i've believed all my life-then what good is this music going to prove to be? what does that say about us? what are we confirming in ourselves by doting on art t...

Lester Bangs

I'll probably never produce a masterpiece, but so what? I feel I have a Sound aborning, which is my own, and that Sound if erratic is still my greatest pride, because I would rather write like a dancer shaking my ass to boogaloo inside my head, and p...

Lester Bangs

They're events you remember all your life, like your first real orgasm. And the whole purpose of the absurd, mechanically persistent involvement with recorded music is the pursuit of that priceless moment. So it's not exactly that records might unhin...

Lester Bangs

Astral Weeks,” insofar as it can be pinned down, is a record about people stunned by life, completely overwhelmed, stalled in their skins, their ages and selves, paralyzed by the enormity of what in one moment of vision they can comprehend. It is a...

Lester Bangs

It's not enough just to do those things anymore; what you must do instead if you want success on any large scale is either figure out a way of getting yourself associated in the audience's mind with their pieties and their sense of 'community,' i.e. ...

Lester Bangs

When kids can't afford to see it anymore maybe we'll have a whole resurgence of garage bands all over America and this New Wave thing will start to mean something on a grass roots level.

Lester Bangs

The thing is that, they all had real strong personalities and real distinct identities, and I don't find most of the groups that are coming out now really do.

Lester Bangs

That's one reason why it's pretty worthless, I can't totally buy it, if you think about it, it's things like the Phil Spector records. On one level they were rebellion, on another level they were keeping the teenager in his place.

Lester Bangs

Or like in the early 70's when we had the reaction against acid rock and all the fuzz tone, and feedback, and the noise. And you had James Taylor and everyone went acoustic and that.

Lester Bangs

Nothing ever quite dies, it just comes back in a different form.

Lester Bangs

No, I see it as meaning very little at the moment because none of the groups are about anything.

Lester Bangs

No I don't think it was a myth at all, anymore than what the recession that the whole country was experiencing was a myth, which obviously seems like it's going to get worse and worse.

Lester Bangs

I'm really schizophrenic about that, because on the one hand I would say, yes there is, there's something inherently, even violent about it, it's wild and raw and all this.

Lester Bangs

I mean the interesting thing I think would be if something happened like, what happened in England where all these kids that all of a sudden can't afford the ticket prices.

Lester Bangs

I mean it's easier to be in a demonstration if it's a trip that's one of the reasons why the whole thing fell apart in 1971, because it wasn't a trip any longer.

Lester Bangs

I mean Iggy and The Stooges first couple of albums I think sold twenty five thousand between the two of them you know and so to talk in terms of an underground I mean you have to go really to the independent labels and things like that.

Lester Bangs

I hate Stanley Clark, but I have to admit he's playing Jazz whether I like it or not.

Lester Bangs

Here we are in the 70's when everything really is horrible and it really stinks. The mass media, everything on television everything everywhere is just rotten. You know it's just really boring and really evil, ugly and worse.

Lester Bangs

Author Bio

  • NameLester Bangs
  • DescriptionAmerican music journalist
  • BornDecember 13, 1948
  • DiedApril 30, 1982
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionMusician; Journalist; Writer